


Five Histories of the Imperator Furiosa (and one bid for the future)

by triarii



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, Amputation, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Irresponsible motorcycle riding, Mild Gore, Other, Pre-Canon, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4476761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triarii/pseuds/triarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in the vault of the Five Wives, Furiosa tells her past. <br/>(A series of vignettes from before the road war.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> in this chapter, CW for brief mention of invasive medical procedures and self harm, as well as anything that comes along with the five wives, though nothing explicit or gratuitous

the first history

. 

“Furiosa,” Cheedo asks, “Rictus said you were one of us, once.”

They sit around her like children, hanging on to her every word. She’s still scabbed and plastered from her latest excursion, dust clinging stubbornly to her pants. Her throat is sore from yelling during battle, hoarse as she speaks. “He was in here without supervision?”

“He wasn’t long. Miss Giddy chased him out.”

Furiosa nods. She fiddles with her metal hand, trying to scrape sand from one of the mechanisms. “I was.”

Angharad touches her knee, gently. There are new cuts along her eyes.

“Will you tell us what happened?” asks Toast the Knowing. “How could a wife become a war boy?”

“I was barren, and of no use.”

.

Furiosa had not long been a wife, had not even long been motherless. Strong and healthy, she should have been the prize of Immortan Joe’s brides, but it seemed that she had only just been swaddled in white when the Organic Mechanic arrived to examine her. She had learned from the Vuvalini about some things, about wombs and children and mothers as fertile as the land of the green place, of initiating mothers planting the seeds, but the beeps of his machines and the prying things inside her and how they somehow labeled her infertile meant naught at all.

Immortan Joe himself had stared her down.

“What use are you to me, unable to produce an heir?” he had growled, hulking and armored, as if her unknown infertility had been deliberate deception, as if she’d traitored him with her barren womb. Next to him stood Rictus Erectus, towering and fearsome, staring at her as he did all the wives. Even in her white gauze, terror rocking her from crown to toe, she felt stronger than them both, iron to the core. “Tell me why I shouldn’t cast you out to the ground among the Wretched.”

“I can be of use to you,” she’d said without even thinking, her jaw set as stone.

“You’re too small for milking,” Immortan Joe mused, his respirator wheezing and hissing. “And too hard to rear young.”

“She’s a fighter, s’for sure,” the Organic Mechanic had leered.

“Ha! Make her a war boy, then?” Joe said, and laughed and laughed. The men joined him, and Furiosa stood firm.

“I can fight,” she said. “I’ve fought before.”

“One of my wives, become a war boy?” Immortan Joe bellowed another laugh, booming through the wives’ chambers. A beat later, Rictus followed. One of his wives, she thought, as if his ownership erased her history.

“She’ll be dead in a ten days,” Rictus said.

Furiosa stood firm. “I’ll survive one hundred days,” she said. “In three hundred days, I’ll be your best general.”

Immortan Joe laughed, and laughed, and laughed. One night in seven, the wives were forced to entertain him; on the good nights, he laughed like this, charmed by their performances or conversation. Even now, furious at her uselessness, she was just an entertainment to him. “You’ll start at the bottom, like any war pup. You’ll earn your wheels.”

She nodded, her jaw firm. Even then she knew how to survive.

Immortan Joe had cast her out of the wives’ chambers, the heavy vault door sealing her out. Deep in the citadel, she was stripped of her white gauze by an Imperator, given instructions and heavy mechanic’s pants and strong steel-toed boots. If the war boys were stunned to see what appeared to be one of Joe’s wives enter their rank, they quickly shook it off.

A new initiate was a celebration. Her head was shaved, white powder paint anointing her. War boys screamed praises to the V8, louder and louder with each lock of hair that fell to the floor. Their chant thudded behind her breastbone, in time with her heartbeat: _fukushima kamicrazy war boys—_

Shaved bald, painted white, the Imperator gave her black axle grease to paint herself. A hush fell, tense whispers waiting. Staring at her in the mirror was a ghost of herself, harsh white and fearful. She felt exposed, stripped to the waist as she was, the skin of her arms and breasts goose-pimpled from the water-cooled Citadel air. The grease was thick and heavy on her fingertips. She wanted to black herself out and disappear. She knew she was about to pledge to die historic, but where the other boys wished for death as screaming battle fodder, she held survival to her chest with greedy hands, determined to outlive them all. Her mouth hardened in a determined line, and in the mirror she finally recognized her own face. She seized the grease, wiping one long black streak across her eyes, then higher, then higher. No frills or flash, just a stark black forehead, a mask of loyalty, a challenge to the Immortan who claimed she couldn’t live. With each swipe of her fingers, she wiped herself out more, leaving a soldier in her place, someone who could relentlessly survive.

She turned, the Imperator nodding in satisfaction. She faced the crowd, throwing her hands up into the V8. Screams and cheers echoed, and she snarled into them, fierce and powerful.

The Imperator stood before her, held up the can of chrome. She bared her teeth, and he chromed her mouth, coating her teeth and dripping from her lips, running through her fresh white paint. Her head rushed, vision blacking out, blood thudding in her veins, muscles strong and tense like wire.

The Imperator yelled to the crowd, his voice booming through the stone halls, crashing and echoing in her head like the voice of God. “On this day, witness as Furiosa enters the War Boys, shiny and chrome! By his deeds, may he honor Him: V8! May he die witnessed and historic on the Fury Road, to McFeast with the gods on the highways of Valhalla!” Around her, the screams washed over her like waves; _witness him! witness him! witness him!_

She pumped her fist in the air, blood pounding, vision swimming and rushing, chrome pulsing through her like fire. The pounding chant of their witness slowly died out, fading into anticipation. Even with her chrome-rushed head, she remembered the next step. The sound ripped from somewhere deep in her chest as she bellowed, starting the chant.

“We are war boys!” she screamed.

 _“War boys!”_ the crowd echoed, sound washing over her like a crashing wave.

“Kamicrazy war boys!”

_“War boys!”_

“Fukushima kamicrazy war boys!”

_“Fukushima kamicrazy war boys!”_

“We ride eternal!”

_“Eternal!”_

“We die historic!”

_“Historic!”_

Finally, in unison, the hall echoed with a thousand voices, her own drowned among them: “ _As we ride to Valhalla, may we be witnessed!_ ”

In those moments, head rushing and teeth bared, perhaps she looked like she was grinning.

Later, when the chrome wore off, leaving her head pounding and body shaking on the come-down, she felt an ache deep within her. She was a war boy now, body mind and soul. The ghosts of her past weighed heavy around her; her many mothers, her clan of women, the people who told her to value life above all else. What would they think of her, she thought, now that she’d stripped herself of her womanhood and promised herself to a suicide cult? It almost helped to embrace the way the other war boys never even thought to call her _she_ , to keep the green place locked away as she emptied countless rounds into the shooting targets. It was easier to distance herself from what should have been.

Still, as she walked the halls of the citadel, she felt the giddy rush of freedom through her grief; her prison may have only gotten bigger, but now she had a gun, a set of wheels, the someday-promise of escape. 


	2. Chapter 2

the second history (respite)

.

She’s so hard, they call her “bag of nails.” Sent through the rock tumbler of the war boys’ tongue, it translates to Bagganails, the nickname thrown at her with equal parts jeering and respect. Full-lifers like her were uncommon among their ranks; full-lifers who weren’t born in the Citadel even less so. Among the war boys, she only stood out for being so hard. They were a fervent, religious lot, but boys they were all the same, and they teased her constantly for not laughing along to their jokes. At first they even thought her to be weak, despite all her skill in battle, until she broke a boy’s arm during a spar. (A group jumped on her after the bone snapped, and her nose crunched under a well-placed fist; when she wouldn’t go down, they all emerged bloody and--strangely enough--with a new respect for her.)

She never did wrong, though; never failed to praise the V8s and give anointment of oil and grease, and though they were hollow gestures sometimes they even gave her some small comfort. There were days that she had blacked out of her memory, and it was with those days that she practiced with a single-minded fury at the gun targets, each shot she fired aimed at Immortan Joe’s skull. Her accuracy was impeccable, soon enough, and when asked her secret she always gave credit to the Immortan, relishing in her own secret blasphemy.

In the mess and barracks, the war boys laughed and yelled and fought and dreamed, starry-eyed, of their deaths, and that’s when they first called her the bag of nails, because she said that she’d rather kill than die.

She was assigned to guard the chamber of the Five Wives after proving herself strong in battle; it was a position of high honor, but reserved only for those who could never sire a child--eunuchs, mostly, boys who'd lost their tackle or never had it to begin with. (She supposed she fit into the second camp.) She wanted nothing more than to reject it; the Vault was a place she never wanted to return to, and she was terrified of seeing a familiar face among Joe's wives, though she knew they must all be long gone. But an honor so great could not be passed on, not by a low-rank war boy like her, so she steeled herself, retreating into her façade of loyalty, hiding under her soldier's mask.

She stood just inside the door to the wives’ chambers, rigid as steel. When she had first arrived at the post, they had tried to engage her, shocked and excited to see another woman in this place. She was still a war boy in those days, her head shaved smooth, skin painted white, the knowledge of her own womanhood long-buried, chest bare and no chastity belt about her waist. They’d surrounded her, all talking at once, asking if there were other war boys like her, if other women lived in the Citadel, begging her name and where she’d come from and finally she had snarled at them and they all retreated behind Miss Giddy.

Her first day guarding the wives was Respite. The wives counted their days in sevens: one night each with Immortan Joe, one night to all entertain him, and the last night was Respite before it started up again. They named their nights after themselves; the weeks went Angharad, Toast the Knowing, the Dag, Capable, and Cheedo. Sometimes, he would call them out of order, or call one wife for an extra night--they dreaded those days like nightmares.

Furiosa was glad that her first night was Respite. She could stand rigid and silent as the five wives relaxed, and it was easier to pretend that she never breathed easy on Respite in their place; it was easier to be their jailer than it was to be their ally. She didn’t know if that façade could last--when the time came that she had to open the vault for their escort to Immortan Joe’s quarters, she thought, they might realize that she was just as much a prisoner as them. Somehow, it was easier for them to discount her as another faceless war boy than it was to show her allegiance, in those days. Letting them see her as she was, horrified and helpless to save them, was too much. She buried those feelings deep down, next to memories of a green sanctuary and the soft voices of mothers, and steeled herself to permit evil.

(The next night, after Respite, was the Splendid Angharad’s. Furiosa was stoic and silent as she heaved the door open, watching stonily as Angharad walked with the grace of a queen condemned, shackles hobbling her from running and Joe’s sigil flashing toothed steel between her hips.)

The wives’ cell was itself a strange respite from the communal bunks of the war boys, though, and the nights Furiosa spent there could be either restless or tranquil. The low sounds of the wives’ whispers, of soft cloth rustling, of the lap of water in their bathing pools was nothing that Furiosa was accustomed to; the barracks were always loud, full of sick boys whimpering, healthier ones fighting and fucking and laughing and snoring, the sound of the Citadel’s rigging clanking and grinding, the aqua-cola pumps rumbling. The quiet of the wives’ prison, in comparison, was sometimes jarring.

Still, it was something to break up the routine, and Furiosa refused to complain. But a deep part of her was chilled when she was on duty; when she sealed the vault door behind herself to stand silent, when she hardened herself to keep Joe’s five wives distant and wary, she was far too aware that had she stayed among their ranks, she would never be afforded the luxury to leave even this small prison.

. 

Even the smallest trickle of water, however, can erode stone. It starts with their accusations; they call her battle fodder, brainwashed, betrayer of all women, hissing it through their teeth as they walk by her, spitting out condemnations as if the words tasted bitter. They have no reason to think she’s any different from the most kamicrazy of the war boys, obsessed with honor and Valhalla--worse, perhaps, since even their previous guards have at least deigned to speak. It stings, but Furiosa can survive it, if only by knowing that she’s no more brainwashed than them.

Eventually, they seem to realize that: Furiosa is more clear-headed, a flame that burns cool instead of all-cylinders. They start to notice the way her jaw tightens when they are summoned to Immortan Joe, how she never tries to defend the glory of Valhalla when they blaspheme it, and they try to put her history together in piecemeal and legend heard from any source they can--Rictus Erectus’s loose lips, gossip from their few other guards, even cryptic bids to be patient from Miss Giddy, who remembers a Furiosa robed in white. They slowly get her to talk by asking for help with petty tasks, pulling her out of her silence for longer and longer, making her rigid stance soften.

Furiosa cannot hold out forever, and eventually she breaks. The wives coo over her, once she lets them, running their hands through her close-cropped hair, sitting on the arms of her chairs and at her feet like puppies, always touching, petting her like a doll. In all her days at the Citadel, Furiosa forgot what girlhood could look like. They beg her for news, for stories, for anything that they can’t get from their stacks of books, and she obliges them, hesitantly at first, but they win her over with their eagerness, the joy on their faces when she speaks to them. Each time they catch her façade crack, they dig their hands into the fissure, prying her apart until they can see her innards. Soon, they talk freely in front of her, their most treasonous thoughts, their hatred of the Immortan, their desire for more. It’s bait laid out, and Furiosa knows it, but she takes it all the same. It feels good to blaspheme, the words sweeter than fruit on her tongue.

Furiosa is a clumsy reader, good at deciphering engine serials and reading a compass and not much else. In exchange for her stories, they help her slowly and painstakingly sound out the words on a page. She never asked them to; one day, they had just handed her a book and began to teach. It’s slow going; every time she learns the sound a letter makes, it seems that it has ten more sounds she’s never heard of. Despite her attempts at patience, Furiosa has a short temper--the word _knight_ left her spitting in anger, and she rhymed _cough_ with _though_ for two weeks until the wives could muster up the courage to tell her. (With good reason--she had screamed in what almost sounded like anguish when they did, then swore off reading altogether. It didn’t last.)

She’s improving, though. She still needs to follow the words on the page with a finger, but her voice is stronger, less hesitant as she reads aloud. But there are still incidents: in a moment of frustration, Furiosa nearly throws the book she’s reading across the room. Capable gently takes it from her hands, smoothing her hand over the worn cover.

“Why the fuck,” spits Furiosa, “is it pronounced ‘kernel’? You’re just making things up to tease me for being stupid--”

“We’re not making it up,” says the Dag. “We don’t know why it’s pronounced that way, it just _is_.”

“You’re not stupid,” adds Capable, handing her the book again. “Some words are just hard to learn. You’ve been doing a good job.”

Furiosa’s face burns under her paint, hot with anger and frustration. She finds her place, staring at the next sentence, the words coming slow and halting. She stops, at the end of her rope, metal hand punching the ground hard enough to make the nearest stack of books wobble. “Why do you all make me _do_ this?” she finally asks, very close to raising her voice. They all shrink back, worry crossing their faces, save for one.

Angharad just looks at her, motions to the books. “Because you look at them with such longing.”

Furiosa’s face still burns, but no longer from anger. She looks down, eyes pricking, and begins to read again.

 


	3. Chapter 3

the third history (victory)

.

Furiosa has only just stopped standing silent guard when they ask her. They still sometimes slip and call her Bagganails when she’s just barely in earshot. But Angharad bids her to sit, the rest of the women watching her with wary fascination: her shaved head, starting to grow back in and due for a trim, her bare chest, her white paint, her metal arm.

“Furiosa,” says Angharad the Splendid, “will you tell us a story?”

She blinks in disbelief. “A story?”

The Dag pipes up, “We’ve already read all the ones in our books.”

“We want to know about you,” says Capable.

“The war boy who was once a wife,” adds Toast.

They’re suddenly all talking at once, comparing details back and forth, occasionally turning to her to jump in. She’s overwhelmed. She shushes them with a few waves of her arms.

“What kind of stories do you think I’d have?” she asks, still slightly shocked.

“Lots,” says Cheedo. “Rictus told us about you, once.”

“The Organic Mechanic said to ask about the time you stood up on a bike.”

“That?” She almost smiles. “It wasn’t that interesting.”

“We’re interested!” says Angharad.

“I… fine. I suppose.” Furiosa pauses, unsure of how to begin. “I, ah. It wasn’t my first battle. It was my first on a bike, I think. So, one of my first.”

“You ride motorcycles?”

“I was practically born on one. The green place--where I’m from--we all rode them. We didn’t keep cars.”

There are whispers, small exclamations of “--the green place!”, questions that get smothered in their excitement to hear more.

“I was still new. I had to talk my way on. Uh. Nobody had seen me ride before.” She pauses, but the five wives sit enraptured by even her halting storytelling. “When I was young, I used to do tricks? Before I was taken away. Standing on the seat, while the bike was moving, that was one of them.”

“Were you a performer? Like in the circuses?” asks Cheedo.

Furiosa isn’t sure what a circus is, so she ignores that part of the question. “No. I was just a girl. It was a way to spend the day.”

“So what happened?” Angharad asks gently, prodding her story back on course.

“I wanted to get on a bike, so I did.”

.

It didn’t take long for her to get onto a bike. Sixty days stuck inside as a revhead learning engines, then a few small skirmishes hoodratting and lancing passed before she talked her way onto a motorcycle--it was a solid bike, mid-size, sturdy but still maneuverable, and the rider’s usual passenger was too sick for battle. As the alarms blared, she walked up to the war boy manning it, watched him kick the bike into gear.

“Need a rider?” she asked.

He didn't throw anything at her, which was a  start. “Depends. Can ye stay on and shoot at the same time?” he’d scoffed. Her unscarred body betrayed her lack of battle experience; occasionally, she found herself wishing for a shirt, not for modesty but to keep the other war boys from scoffing at her unblemished skin. This war boy was older than her--not by much, only a few harvests--but he was covered in scrapes, lumps, old road rash, the proud scars of a scrapper.  

She got in his face, as she’d learned to do, keeping him from turning away from her, and her voice didn’t once shake. “I was born on a bike. Riding’s like breathing.”

He stared her down, his breath coming in hot huffs on her face, and she glared back, bumping their foreheads together in a challenge. He huffed, then turned away, snapping down his goggles as he revved the engine. He jerked his head towards the seat. “Make it fast, then; we’re rolling out!” He didn’t expect much of her, she could tell, but it was more than enough.

She swung a leg over the bike, holding on with her knees as she took inventory: shotguns and ammo stashed in holsters along the saddlebags, explosive lances in large pockets, one emergency flare, and two guns strapped to her driver. With a roar of the engine, they were off.

The sun was scalding as they roared out of the citadel, Furiosa’s world suddenly turning to blinding light, intense heat, and bass thudding in her bones. Behind them, the Doof Wagon pounded, the sound of shredding guitar and relentless drums washing over Immortan Joe’s troops, directing their movements. She was still learning to decode the pattern of drumbeats and power chords, like learning a second language.

Her driver flicked his glance back at her, over his shoulder. “What do I call you?” he yelled over the engine. “If I need you to do something?”

“Furiosa,” she yelled back, her name coming easy for fear of him calling her Bagganails.

He nodded, took a hand off the handlebars to jab a thumb at himself. “The Ace,” he indicated. “Today ain’t gonna be pretty!”

“What are we doing?”

“Some a' the Bullet Farmer’s boys’s gone rogue an’ decided to attack us--he ain’t stopping them, neither, he wants t’see if they can take the Citadel, the fuckin’ schlanger,” he said with no lack of venom. He gesticulated again, pointing towards the horizon with a flat palm. “We’re riding a wedge right through their formation, gonna try to break ‘em up and wreck the wheels on their big rig.”

Over the horizon, she could see the dark haze of cars approaching. The roar of engines got louder, the war boys in their formations either growing quiet in the anticipation of battle or yelling all the louder in bravado. The boys on bikes were pulling ahead, smaller cars flanking them as they moved towards the front of the Citadel’s formation.

A crater opened in the ground next to the bike. A wheel got blasted off a nearby car, making it spin out. The cars on the horizon were still little more than dark blotches, but Furiosa could hear Ace cursing under his breath. She watched as war boys were knocked off their sniping perches, their guns clattering down, lost under the wheels of revving trucks.

“Shit,” he yelled back to her. “They know where our snipers mount!”

One of his guns, she noticed, had a scope. Since she was old enough to hold a gun, she had been taught to shoot fast and accurate. Years of rationed bullets had made her nearly as good as the oldest of the Vuvalini at their practice: one man, one bullet. (The hours she spent in the Citadel’s target range, arms aching from holding up the heavy guns, ears ringing from the rifle report, didn’t hurt either.)

“Ace,” she yelled. “Give me your gun.”

“Are you insane?” he spat back. “This bike don’t have a sniper’s perch--”

“ _Give me the gun_ ,” she repeated.

There was a vehemence in her voice that made him listen. One-handed, he unstrapped the scoped rifle from his back, passing it to her. “I’m not gonna witness your sorry ass when y’eat shit, pup!”

“You won’t need to,” she said. “Now keep the bike steady.”

Swinging the strap over her shoulders, she stood up on the footpegs, placing one hand on the seat between her legs. She could see Ace nervously checking her motions in his mirrors, but ignored him, forcing herself to breathe. Her childhood was rushing back at her as she placed one foot, then the other on the seat of the bike, trying to remember victory rather than eating dirt.

“Furiosa--” Ace started to yell.

“Hold her steady!” she yelled back. “Just trust me!”

Slowly, painstakingly, she planted her feet strong, and started to stand on the seat of the bike. She let the motions of the road sway her, keeping her knees unlocked, and finally she found her rhythm, her stance strong and steady, knees loose and back straight. Ace could barely keep his eyes on the road for watching her, and she noticed cars and bikes slowing around them, staring at this kamicrazy war boy standing up on his bike.

She breathed, and raised the rifle. She searched, the scope jumping with the bumps of the road, but she just kept breathing, slowly in and out, evening her grip. Soon, she spotted one of the Bullet Farm boys scouting sniping perches, and she exhaled long and smooth as she pulled the trigger. He collapsed. She locked sight on another, holding a rocket launcher--probably the cause of the craters in the road. She breathed, squeezed, felt the crack of recoil. He collapsed.

“One man,” she heard in the back of her mind, “one bullet.”

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of battle, but each time she pulled the trigger she could feel hands rough as leather over her own, steadying her aim. Lessons rang in her ears, that if a man was close enough to see their green, he was close enough to shoot. She could taste the wet and green-scented air. The men collapsing at the other end of her gun were just old jerrycans, lined up along the backs of touring bikes--target practice. 

She could vaguely hear Ace cursing in wonder below her.

She got in one more shot before she felt the heat of a bullet graze her shoulder, the whip of another just missing her ear. She dropped, landing squarely on the seat, her gun clattering against the back of the bike, swinging on its strap. Ace swerved, weaving around other bikes on the road, making it impossible to tell whose bike had had the sniping war boy on the back.

War boys on other bikes pumped their fists, screaming excited witness. Furiosa found herself grinning, fierce and joyless. The wall of vehicles was growing closer, bullets coming in bursts, return fire coming from more than just snipers now.

She hopped back up onto the seat, more confident this time. She stayed bent low, her body lined up behind Ace’s, and cocked her gun.

“Ace!” she yelled. His head half-turned, and she continued: “Don’t breathe.” She rested the gun on his shoulder, lining up another shot.

It cracked, and another man fell.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see other war boys trying to mimic her, attempting to stand with shaky legs on the seats of their bikes. She noticed a few bikes swerve as their passengers fell, grabbing the riders to keep from eating dirt on the road.

They swung behind a car, offering temporary cover. Another car pulled beside them, the boys hanging off of it offering giddy high-fives, pumping their fists and screaming breathless witnesses. Ace half-turned, grinning in disbelief.

“Told you,” she said, “I was born riding.”

“Born riding, shit,” he replied, “Didn’t expect you to pull of something shine as _that_.”

“Just you wait!” she said. "I'm not even close to done." 

He was about to yell something back when the car in front of them swerved away. They fell into formation, a long V of bikes revving, fanging it ahead of the Citadel’s troops to play chicken with the approaching wall of cars. Furiosa could see lancers readying themselves, knees locking as they stood on their footpegs, explosive lances taking aim. She grabbed her own, letting the rifle swing around her neck. Lancing was her weak point: the explosive-tipped spikes were cumbersome and heavy, and throwing them with any accuracy was a skill that took most war boys years.

She could feel the heat of the approaching cars’ engines licking against her face. Within seconds, they were in. Dust kicked and swirled, visibility low, anything more than a few yards ahead just a dark blur. Around her, she could see the flash of gunfire, hear the pound of bullets. Ace was bent low, steering quick and trying to keep the bike smooth, and as they approached enemy cars, she let loose her first lance. She got lucky enough, and her lance caught the hubcap of an armored jeep, exploding and throwing the vehicle up onto two wheels, nearly tipping it. She swung one leg over the bike, lowering herself almost to the ground with each turn, using the chassis as cover. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bike get blown away, skidding along the road, cars swerving out of its path. Its riders were nowhere to be seen.

One-handed, she grabbed another lance. Hiding along the right side of the bike, only one leg on the footpeg, Ace looked down at her in his mirrors and she jerked her head. He nodded, revving hard, and they roared ahead, nearly reaching the center of the Bullet Farm’s formation.

The dust from the road was covering her, making Furiosa almost invisible. As they reached the Bullet Farm’s biggest rig, she struck, ramming the lance hard into its undercarriage, not about to risk a throw with her shaky aim. It wedged in an axle, exploding and twisting, wrenching her shoulder as the fireball singed off the fine hairs on her arm and left a patchwork of burns. A hubcap nearly hit her as she pulled herself back up onto the seat, swinging over to the other side of the bike to avoid bullets and fire. Some buckshot grazed her on a scatter, leaving stinging bloody pinholes along her ribs, but it was a pain she could shrug off.

As they circled the rig, she heard two more explosions--at least two more bikes made it this far in. Ace pulled in front of the rig, forcing their pace car out of position. Glancing back, she saw that the men on the rig’s chassis weren’t looking her direction, too distracted with the other war boys circling on their bikes. Only the driver had noticed them, his men too far away to notice his frantic signalling. She grabbed her rifle again, hoisting herself onto the seat. Her shoulder was bleeding freely where the bullet had grazed her earlier. She stood, faster this time, her sea legs coming to her quicker and quicker with practice. She took aim, choosing her targets fast--the boys with the biggest guns, whoever brought the most danger to the other Citadel bikers. She cocked the rifle, and fired.

Two more boys fell before she realized she had one shot left, and no time to reload in the midst of enemy cars. Some of the others manning the rig noticed the driver’s calls for help after seeing the results of her sniping, realizing that it was a Citadel bike riding in their pace position, and the rig was revving hard, gearing up to ram them. She lined up fast, scope sweeping as she prayed for speed, until she found the driver of the Bullet Farmer’s war rig. She breathed, in, out, and squeezed the trigger.

The rig swerved as its driver collapsed dead on the wheel, clipping another Bullet Farm car as it went. Furiosa fell back hard onto the bike’s seat, her back knocking against Ace’s. It took her a moment to realize she’d been shot, a bolt-action arrow lodged just below her collarbone.

“Ace--” she began, trying to turn around, before realizing he’d been hit as well. An arrow had pierced his arm clean through, and she saw him breathing heavily, trying to keep his grip on the throttle even with his bicep nearly severed.

He grimaced through the pain. “You still good?” he yelled.

She grimaced back. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Can you drive?” The bike was shaking in his effort to keep it straight.

“Yeah,” she yelled back. “If this thing isn’t gonna kill me.” She was only half-joking, warily watching blood run from the wound.

“Don’t pull it out. It’ll keep the bleeding down!”

She gingerly tried to move her shoulder. It hurt, but the arrow didn’t seem to be too deep. Nothing was severed, and she could live through the pain. She nodded, beginning to stand on the seat again. “When I move, slide back as far as you can!”

“I shouldn’t be listenin’ to you!” he yelled. “You’re more’n kamicrazy!”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, and he ducked down. She jumped, leapfrogging over him as he shot back, making just enough room for her to land in the driver’s seat. The bike swerved, shaking as his hands left the handlebars, but she steadied it, revving the engine once to test it. She glanced in the mirrors, making sure he was hanging on before hanging a sharp turn, her knee nearly brushing the ground as she swung the bike around.

Ace grabbed the belt loops of her pants as they rode low, crouching over the bike as much as possible. The remaining bikes were beginning to turn back as well, the Bullet Farm’s troops thoroughly disorganized enough for the Citadel’s bikers to rejoin their own, ready to let the rest of the troops clean up after them. Furiosa pulled the throttle, roaring to the head of the pack. An enemy car swung behind them, and she motioned behind her for a gun. Ace handed it to her, and she emptied the clip, one-handed, behind her, aiming in the rearview mirror. None of her shots hit anything important, just glancing off of the bumper and hood, but it was intimidating enough. With his good arm, Ace pulled a lance, throwing it behind the bike to make a buffer, experience lending his aim deadly accuracy. The explosion rocked the car, giving them a good head start.

She hadn’t realized that there was such a wall of dust kicked up from the battle until she exited it. Suddenly, the air was clear, Immortan Joe’s troops visible from more than a few feet away. The surviving bikers roared out of the dust cloud to the screams and cheers of the war boys mounted on their cars, and Furiosa could hear Ace’s yelling in return behind her.

Ahead of them, she noticed, was the Gigahorse. Inside, Immortan Joe surveyed his surviving war boys. When Furiosa followed his gaze, scanning the bikes surrounding her, she only just registered how few of the bikes had made it out of the fray. She deliberated for a moment, then yelled behind her for Ace to take the handlebars. He could keep the bike steady one-handed for a few minutes now that they were out of the heat of battle.

He reached around her, holding the bike up. The Gigahorse loomed over them; locking eyes with Immortan Joe, she stood up on the driver’s seat, one foot up between the handlebars, the arrow in her a throbbing rigid pain, blood coursing down her chest from the wound. She raised her arms, ignoring the tearing feeling of her skin and muscle, and stared Immortan Joe down as her hands formed a perfect V8.

Around her, war boys hung off of their cars, mirroring her V8, pointing at her and screaming out in revelation, “ _Witness him!_ ”

She didn’t blink. Immortan Joe looked away first, from this war boy who was once a wife, who they had said wouldn’t survive ten days, riding victorious out of battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you know i have a mad max blog now? please come and yell with me about this franchise   
> [here it is](http://a-fuel-injected-suicide-machine.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for canon-typical violence, mild gore, and amputation in this chapter (as well, as ever, everything that comes along with the five wives, but still nothing explicit there)

the fourth history (scars)

.

Inside the Wives’ compound, Furiosa unstraps her metal arm. She shouldn’t; she’s supposed to be standing guard, constantly vigilant, but phantom pains are shooting down to where her hand used to be and she fumbles with the straps, pulling them off as fast as she can, and if there’s any place in the Citadel where she can have a moment of weakness, it’s in here.

The clinking of it makes Angharad look up from her book. She stands, leaving wet footprints on the stone floor as she pads over, wordlessly helping Furiosa with the buckles, easing her prosthetic off as Furiosa lets out a single choked hiss of pain.

She doesn’t ask questions. Tentatively, she takes the stump of Furiosa’s arm in her hands, smoothing her soft uncalloused thumbs across the thick scar tissue. After a few moments, the pain recedes, and Furiosa can look her in the eyes again.

“Thanks,” she manages to choke out.

Angharad simply nods. “What part of it hurts?”

“Parts that aren’t there anymore.” She shrugs. “I used to have a scarring below my wrist. It felt like I was getting it done again.”

“You have scars like the other war boys?”

“Had. That was my only one, aside from the brand.”

“I never knew. We thought you had been born with only one arm,” Angharad says.

“No, no.” Furiosa shakes her head with a sigh. “When I came here, I had both.” She holds up the metal hand. “This one is nearly as good; I barely miss my old one anymore. Sometimes I just miss the scar.”

.

After their first battle together, Ace had slapped her on the good shoulder with his own good arm, then pointed to the buckshot embedded in her ribs.

“Now people’ll know you can fight,” he’d grinned.

“I think they figured that out today,” she’d shot back.

He had shrugged, and almost turned away before adding, “You’ll probably get promoted, but we’d make a hell of a team.”

Later, she would be surprised that she didn’t hesitate. “And end up paired with some pup who only wants to die fast and hard? Not even wheels are worth that.”

He cocked his head, considering her. “Well if riding backseat ain’t gonna hurt your pride, welcome aboard, boss.” He called her boss from that moment on, even though at the time he still outranked her.

They started sharing a bunk that night, the way most teams did in the crammed barracks. (War boys tended to sleep wherever they fell, but there were never quite enough hammocks to go around. They mostly slept two to three in a bunk, piled like puppies.) He had his head on straighter than the other war boys, she decided; he was a tad more blasphemous, a bit less suicidal, preferring strategy to glory, even as bone fevers sometimes rocked him in the night. He considered Valhalla a destination that would be waiting for him when the time came, and not a moment sooner. Furiosa decided she respected that.

It had been twenty-eight days since then, and his arm had healed well. He still called her boss, even where others could hear. Some other war boys had spent days upon days trying to stand on their bikes like her. Furiosa hardly noticed them, but the Ace did; the two of them had started riding regularly, scoring wide swathes in the sand around the Citadel as they practiced with almost religious fervor, each scavenge mission an opportunity to train. Soon, they could anticipate each others’ movements as easy as breathing: Furiosa would hug the side of the bike just as Ace leaned around a turn, letting her knee just barely kiss the ground; she would grab the handlebars and pull herself into the driver’s seat and he would swing behind her, standing backwards on the footpegs and drawing his gun in one smooth motion; she would stand on the seat of the bike as he circled, firing at targets, her aim getting faster and more accurate by the hour as she learned how he drove.

They would only stop when the dehydration got too bad, sitting in the shade of the Citadel as they sipped their day’s rations of aqua-cola, trying to make it last, and Ace would watch their copycats, always trying to get Furiosa to appraise their technique.

“Wez ain’t doin’ too bad,” he said one day, pointing at a war boy whose legs seemed steady as he tried to balance.

Furiosa shrugged, not really paying attention.

“The Immortan might allow us a team,” he said.

“Why would we want that?” she asked. “Babysitting a bunch of kamicrazies is a waste of time.”

“‘S a command post. You want to move up the ranks, yeah?”

She grunted in assent. Ace grinned.

“We could train ‘em. Get a whole gang. You’re a full-lifer, get ‘em good enough and you could make Imperator.”

She pictured a team of valkyries, the Vuvalini riding like furies through the salt flats. She pictured war boys flanking her instead, dreaming of dying bloody.

“They don’t want to train; they want to die.”

“Those ones don’t.” He motioned at the boys still circling, trying to perfect their balance. “‘Least not right away. They wanna die _historic_ , not just any old way.”

“I’ll think about it.” She stood, heading for the lifts, knowing that there was repair work waiting for her. The war boys on their bikes slowed as she left, watching.

In a week, she allowed the better of the riders to follow her and Ace along on a scavenge run, telling them that if they were only in to die they were a waste of her time. (A few boys had turned their bikes around; most of them had stayed.) A week later, and she made them hold a formation. Three more days, and she was drilling them, Ace grinning smugly when he thought she wasn’t looking. If they fell, she left them behind, so they quickly learned not to fall. The others in the Citadel started calling them her Furies, and she mostly liked it.

Their first road war in formation left a rival road gang decimated. After that, the Furies started modding their bikes, building lancer’s perches and sniping mounts so even the freshest pup could hold his balance; Furiosa let them, even though it always felt a bit like cheating.

She and Ace kept their bike pristine. The only mods they added were better shocks, racing tires, and two juts of pipe on each side, so they could completely slip off the seat and ride clinging to the side of the bike’s frame. During raids, she headed their formation, standing on the seat of the bike just as she did as a child, her rifle cocked steady and smooth as glass.

Her Furies modded themselves, too: a V-twin engine on their left forearms, surrounded by flames. When she first noticed, she had been sternly curious. They had been hesitant to show her; the bag of nails was not one to be gentle with her disapproval, and modding themselves as a gang outside her command could mark them war boys gone rogue. But she had considered the design, the deep cuts made to form it, and without a word stuck out her own arm to receive it in kind. She didn’t flinch as the most artistic of her boys carved it deep into her flesh; didn’t even cuss or grunt with the pain like the others did. When it was finished, she gave them a nod of approval and went back to her repairs, not even bothering to wrap it, blood still oozing from the fresh cuts.

Ace had swung himself over the engine block she was working on, a grin teasing the edges of his mouth.

“See you got yourself marked up, boss.”

She shrugged, as if he could see it, half her body underneath the chassis. “Only fair. They’re our formation.”

“Your formation,” he corrected her. “I just ride with you.”

“You outrank them,” she shot back. “You even outrank me.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Ain’t outranked you fr’while, boss. But I oughta get one of those, myself, now’s it’s official.”

She rolled out from underneath the engine, a mix of dried blood and fresh grease staining her hands. “It’s not official just because I wanted some scar.”

“Nah, it is. We mess together, bunk together, ride together, it’s official.” He passed her a fresh spark plug, then grabbed a spanner and got to work on the other side of the block. “You’re not all alone anymore, bagganails.”

She rolled her eyes, then slid back under the engine. She couldn’t help but consider it, though, the thought of it bringing an unfamiliar warmth to her belly. In the cold world of the Citadel, the Furies weren’t quite family, but one could almost pretend.

.

“I’m sorry you lost it,” says Angharad.

Furiosa grunts noncommittally. “Things happen. When I got the war rig, my crew got new scars--now it’s a flaming wheel on their shoulders.” She starts to strap her prosthetic back on, hefting the weight of it onto her shoulder. The long chafed stripes on her shoulder and chest that the straps have left are shiny and red, and the straps and pads settle into the marks with a heavy familiarity. “I didn’t get that one. There’s no such thing as family here, anyways. It’s probably for the best that the old one is gone.”

Toast and Capable had inched closer as she’d told the tale of her scarring, and soon she has a small audience, five women settled around her, following her every word. As she snaps the last buckle on her arm shut, she thinks, why not? They’ve never dared to ask her, and she’s running low on stories lately anyways.

“The Immortan granted me this arm for valor in battle,” she says. They fall silent, watching her with wide eyes. Her storytelling has gotten less halting, words coming more easily to her around them. “I had been fighting for him for five hundred and thirty days.”

.

Three hundred days had come and gone, and Furiosa was not yet an Imperator. She herself was only somewhere around seven thousand days; she didn’t know how long she had stopped counting her time at the Citadel, but it could have been one hundred days, could have been one thousand. (She started counting again the day she became a war boy.)

Immortan Joe looked on her progress with grudging respect, though. On the three hundredth day, she had been summoned to his chamber, her bones chilled as the wife named Weaver--long gone now, too old for breeding, though she had been the first to swaddle Furiosa in white--sat at his feet, watching her with longing eyes. Furiosa could barely look at her, for fear that her composure would break.

“It has been three hundred days, Furiosa.”

“By my deeds, I have honored the V8,” she said, her jaw set and eyes hard. She parroted the perfect war boy and spoke scripture, refusing to adopt his familiar tone. “I have witnessed many rides to Valhalla, and brought others there myself.”

“My war boys try to fight like you.” His mask hissed as he regarded her. “And your gang brings us glory and good strong scrap.”

“I told you I would be your best.”

He laughed, low and wheezing. “My own property,” he said, “by my mercy, pride of the war boys.”

She seethed, her muscles tight and hard. She knew she was just another amusement; had she not proved her worth ten times over, she was sure he would have grown bored of this diversion long ago.

“You broke your promise, little bag of nails,” he said. “You claimed you would be my best general.” The nickname shocked her more than it should; she knew, logically, that it was good policy for a leader to have his ear to the ground, but this meant he had done more than just hear his Imperator’s reports. He had been keeping tabs on her.

“All I need is the title,” she replied. “Only you have the power to grant that.”

“Ride with me upon the Gigahorse, and we shall see if you are ready.”

She turned pale under her paint. The idea of being locked in the cab of Immortan Joe’s truck sent a bolt of fear through her that she didn’t know she was still capable of feeling. She set her jaw, crushing it down.

“I’ll keep my bike. The Ace and I will ride pace with my gang.” Her tone was firm, refusal to yield apparent in every syllable.

The Immortan was silent, watching her. She wondered if he was surprised, if he had spent so long acting as a god that he forgot that someone could see him as a man. Finally, he nodded. “You’ll be my guard. Tell your Furies that they are awaited.”

The next time the war klaxons blared, it was deep night. The emergency fluorescents blazed to life, washing the barracks in sickly, flickering light, and the stone walls echoed with the excited yells of the war boys.

Ace and Furiosa leapt out of their shared hammock, pulling on boots and swiping on paint as they ran through the caverns to the V8’s altar, shaking sleep from their bodies. The rows of keys behind the cairn of steering wheels was less dramatic, but the Citadel’s bikers treated it with the same gravitas. Furiosa took the keys off of their peg, touching them to her forehead and lips while whispering the prayer before passing them to Ace, who did the same, his brow shining with a mix of fresh paint and the sweat of night fever.

As their bike thundered to life, the war boys Furiosa had been training fell into formation behind them. She saw a few of them nearly swerve as the Gigahorse rolled into place at their backs, Immortan Joe looming over them. Her boys were praying, pumping their fists, screaming pledges to Valhalla as they roared out, setting pace for the Immortan in battle. She hadn’t warned them of the honor they would be receiving, hoping it would keep them focused. Now, though, she stood as Ace revved the bike, facing the formation behind her, signing the V8 at her troops.

“Today we are awaited in Valhalla by the Immortan Joe himself!” she yelled, her voice booming over the engines, her white paint nearly luminescent in the glow of their headlights. “By your deeds, may you honor him and ride shiny and chrome!”

Some of them had tears in their eyes as they signed the V8 back, whooping and cheering and exalting in her blessing. She hoped they wouldn’t ride reckless, desperate to sacrifice themselves under the eyes of their god. But she and Ace had long since drilled it into them that it was better to live twice as long than to die anything but an unavoidable death; that the most historic way to die was when no one in their formation could benefit more from them living. She hoped the lesson, given half as a threat, had stuck.

Furiosa rode standing, her back ramrod straight, her rifle half-cocked as she scanned the horizon, Ace’s back still radiating the heat of sleep against her legs. She could see, in the distance, spiked cars circling, skidding and drifting in random patterns along the Citadel’s territory, showing off: the road gang who called themselves the Buzzards, still fairly new to this end of the Wasteland and hungry for territory. They were scavengers, highly capable trappers, and word had it they ate the carrion of dead drivers felled in battle. She could feel Immortan Joe’s eyes on her back like a physical weight as she lined up a shot, pulled the trigger, felt the crack of recoil. Aiming in the nighttime dark was difficult, but her first shot still hit home. Recocking the rifle, squeezing off more rounds; all of it was as automatic as a heartbeat.

The bike swerved under her as a buzzard car almost skidded into it, making her nearly lose her footing. She bent at the knees, putting a hand on Ace’s shoulder for stability as cars started to surround them.

“Eyes left!” Ace yelled as a car pulled up next to them. Furiosa moved quickly, drawing and letting loose a lance, the heat of the explosion briefly lighting up the battlefield. Ace leaned the bike left, taking the space of the buzzard car as the bike formation circled the Gigahorse, keeping it safe.

Furiosa heard the whip of bolt-action arrows, the thud of bullets, blind instinct keeping her from being hit. She dropped onto the seat, swinging her body low along the side of the bike, her knee nearly brushing the ground as she jammed a lance into the undercarriage of another buzzard’s car, flipping and totaling it.

The battle lasted longer than Furiosa’s adrenaline; long enough that the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. The buzzards were fast, resilient, and resourceful, and she was nearly out of lances and ammunition. They fought with an erratic, formless fervor that made anticipating their next moves next to impossible: one had even tried to climb onto the bike from his car, and she and Ace both had to kick him off, nearly toppling in the process. She’d managed to rip off his weapons belt, though, and for her trouble got a fully-loaded automatic shotgun and a meat cleaver with a blade so thin and sharp she could nearly see through the edge.

She saw one of her Furies hit a trap laid in the sand, their bike flung into the road and bodies strewn into the paths of vehicles going too fast to stop. She didn’t wince when she saw the impact, or the blood. Over the rumble of the bike’s engine, she heard Ace growl witness for them. He was bent low over the handlebars, his eyes squinting behind his goggles, keeping watch for more while her guns thundered, felling enemy drivers wherever she could. Behind them, Immortan Joe’s Gigahorse raged on, tall and impenetrable as his half-life war boys fell one by one across the battlefield. Soon, though, only the largest of the buzzards’ cars remained, hulking junkyard scrappers, and their traps in the road grew fewer and farther between as the tide of the battle turned.

Even riding pace for the Gigahorse wasn’t enough to keep it completely safe, though. The bike Furiosa rode was narrow compared to the monstrous twinned Coupe de Villes, and enough of her Furies had been felled to leave holes in even their strong formation. Immortan Joe’s hulking mount, even with its bulletproof glass and reinforced chassis, was just as vulnerable to sand traps as any other car, and its huge weight meant that going into a roll could be deadly for anyone in its range. Out of the corner of her eye, Furiosa saw a dark spot in the sand.

“Ace!” she yelled, pointing towards the trap in the ground. “Eyes on!”

He swerved right, following her point without even looking, more than ready for her to be his eyes. Furiosa flung a lance just as one of the last of the spine-covered cars pulled next to her. The lance hit home on the trap laid in the sand, and in her peripherals she saw the Gigahorse swerve out of the way just in time. The lance sprung the trap and launched the buzzard car airborne, hurtling towards her and Ace in the explosion; she could barely process it all before she was flung from the bike and her vision blacked out.

She came to in bursts. Once, watching cars and bikes blaze past, the bass of the Doof Wagon pounding, the battle still raging, or perhaps the Citadel’s vehicles were riding home in victory. Again, just long enough to feel the burn of the sun. When she came around for good, she tasted sand and blood in her mouth, a pounding in her head, a roaring in her ears. Every part of her body was screaming, and the longer she was conscious the more she could find the sources of her pain; the smaller hurts began to fade as the worst of the pain concentrated itself in her left arm. Slowly, she looked over, bile rising in her throat as she saw the mangled wreck of metal around her, her arm trapped and crushed in the remnants of Ace’s bike and the buzzard car.

Furiosa forced herself to breathe. As her hearing returned, she could pick out the remnants of battle; the rumble of scavenge trucks, off in the distance, the faint pop of bullets. Perhaps they would find her; perhaps soon, with winches and water. She had probably been truly unconscious for only a minute; fading in and out for only minutes more.

She forced herself to look again. She couldn’t see anything lower than her forearm, could feel nothing of it but blinding pain. She attempted to wiggle a finger, with no results. Her breath was coming ragged, choked with the agony of it. She breathed through her teeth, trying to collect herself. Her head was spinning, her vision fading and returning to sharp focus in harsh bursts.

Ace was nowhere to be seen, she realized, though her thoughts were slow and choked. She scanned the wreck, seeing no bodies, not much blood. It took a few minutes for her to realize the darkness of her vision wasn’t from faintness, but smoke. The smell hit her like a truck: guzzoline, nitro, the burning-plastic smell of an electrical fire, and underneath it all the smell of charring flesh. Distantly, she realized the wreck could--probably would--explode.

Her vision faded out again.

Furiosa snapped to attention--had it been hours, or minutes? Perhaps only seconds. The wreck around her was still smoking, the smell of guzzoline choking, the agony in her arm rolling across her in waves, distracting her from the multitude of other hurts (a broken rib or three; gashes in her face and torso and legs; burns and bruises all over; at least one head wound, clotting her eyelashes with blood.) She found herself in a state of intense clarity, despite her pounding head: the smoking wreck around her was a bomb waiting to go off, and she had her arm chained to it. There was no feeling left to it but pain, and she knew it must be crushed beyond recognition. The scavengers would not find her for half an hour at the very least; it could take hours at the most. Between the smoke, the sounds, and her little knowledge of Buzzard traps, she probably had barely fifteen minutes before the booby traps blew. Their cars were rigged to never survive scavenge; she’d been on enough runs that ended in charred wrecks of twisted metal to know.

She didn’t allow herself to think as she pulled off her belt one-handed. She concentrated only on the effort of tying off, tightening the belt just below her left elbow until the skin around it felt tight and numb. _Just in case_ , she thought. The scavenging war boys would arrive with winches and jaws of life any minute. The wreck was making an ominous noise, the pinging of an overheated engine, the ticking time bomb of a booby trap. The metal of the mangled chassis was hot, too hot to touch, and the heat radiating off of it left burns where her skin brushed it and shimmered in the air. Her mouth was dry as she stared at her arm, struggling to pull it free, bracing a boot against the wreck as she yanked and pulled, fighting to ignore the pain as she struggled to tear herself loose. She could barely feel the arm itself; all she felt was the weight of the wreck, the pressure of twisted rusty metal pinning her down, nonspecific agony in the place where she once had a hand. In desperation, she screamed and screamed and tugged and screamed some more until she was just whimpering like a child, like a trapped animal, trapped under an unyielding wreck.

Eventually, her throat raw and breath short, Furiosa took inventory. Strapped to her back, her scoped rifle and a cruel little spike for jabbing into spines. At her hip, a handgun and an empty flare. Around her waist, the automatic shotgun and the cleaver she had scavenged. She considered the shotgun: too bulky and difficult to work one-handed at this range. She didn’t allow herself to look at the cleaver just yet. She tried to stand, tried to wrench herself free one last time, and sobbed with the pain and humiliation of it all, her tears burning tracks down the remnants of her paint. The pinging and ticking got louder, more rapid, and she froze.

The smoke was coming thicker now. Breathing was getting difficult. The tourniquet around her arm had cut off all sensation--even the pain was starting to seem dull, the little skin she could see below it turning a strange color under the blood and burns and paint.

Furiosa screamed one more time, a roar of frustration and grief, then steadied her breathing. She unstrapped the cleaver clumsily, one-handed. She didn’t allow herself to think, _get used to that_. She considered, briefly, her can of chrome, meant to pave the road smooth to Valhalla. It would take away some of the pain; it would definitely make this job easier. But using it meant, even just symbolically, that she would be ready to die, and if there was one thing Furiosa tacitly refused to do, it was die. She hefted the cleaver, testing its weight. Something in the wreck popped and hissed.

The sound of scavenge engines was getting quieter, not louder, and as they faded, Furiosa gave up hope.

She remembered breathing in. She swung the cleaver up in a high arc, refusing to pause long enough to consider what she was about to do. She brought the cleaver down, hard, with no hesitation.

(She liked to think it had only taken one clean hit. In reality, it took four, bloody and desperate and screaming in great wracking sobs as she hacked off her own arm while the car pinning her ticked and smoked and the hot metal charred her flesh.)

When she was free, she didn’t allow herself to look, just pressed the bleeding stump to the blisteringly hot exhaust tank of what was once Ace’s bike, cauterizing it until it was numb from the burns and the blood mostly stopped flowing. The smell made her gag, vomiting up what little had been in her stomach before the battle. Not five minutes after she staggered away from the wreck, it exploded, its booby trap firing shrapnel in all directions, small shards of metal embedding themselves in her retreating back. When the Citadel’s scavengers found her shortly after, bloody and faint, they would later tell everyone that she didn’t once cry out. She rode shotgun the whole way back, blood staining the upholstery, gritting her teeth so hard she thought they’d break.

Upon arriving at the Citadel, the war boys driving yelled for the lift, their voices tinged with the panic of having one of their own bleeding and amputated in the front seat. Immortan Joe always watched the scavengers’ return, ready to receive them with glory. This time, he heard them yelling frantic: “Immortan! We come bearing scrap and a full-life war boy, returned from halfway down the road to Valhalla!”

With that, they helped Furiosa stand, her head spinning and the bloody cleaver still clutched in her only remaining hand. She could barely see the Immortan, her vision blurred with pain and adrenaline and blood loss.

Over the noise of the crowd and the rushing in her head, Furiosa could hear Immortan Joe’s booming voice fade in and out, snippets getting through to her: something about courage, something about sacrifice, and finally, “He has brought glory to the Citadel!”

As the lift cranked upwards, Furiosa could see the Ace fighting his way to the front of the receiving crowd, ready to bowl her over in the embrace of soldiers who have become brothers, yelling that he’d thought he’d given her witness. He touched their foreheads together, his hands on her shoulders tight like a vice, breathless with disbelief. His voice cut off with a faint choking noise when he stopped long enough to take in the stump of her arm, and he stumbled backwards, yelling for someone to go get the Organic Mechanic. 

She stopped, swaying as she stood. “Didn’t see your body in the wreck… thought I’d be McFeasting without you,” she said, her voice slurring. “But I came back for your sorry ass.”

He almost laughed, then quieted. “They pulled me onto the Gigahorse when the bike crashed,” he said. “We really thought you were off to Valhalla, boss.”

“I almost was.” She swayed more, and one of the war boys from the scavenge run held her up. 

Ace pointed to the cleaver held in her bloody hand. “Did you really--?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It got pinned under the car. Booby-trapped. If I didn’t…” she motions vaguely, an explosion, and a few boys leaned away from her nervously since she forgot to put down the knife.

Ace whistled low through his teeth. “You’re one kamicrazy son of a bitch, boss.”

She laughed, nearly delirious. “Fuck dying historic,” she said, barely able to stand even with the boy behind her holding her up, not even caring that she was speaking blasphemy. “I’m gonna live forever.”

If Ace said anything else, she missed it, though she thought she heard him laugh. She passed out, less unconscious than in a haze of the ordeal her body had gone through.

She woke later in the chop shop, bandaged and hooked to a bloodbag, with the seal of Immortan Joe hooked, shiny and chrome, to the bloodied belt she’d used as her tourniquet. The Organic Mechanic had grinned at her.

“The Immortan sends his blessing, and gratitude for your sacrifice in his name.”

There were pups gathered around her where she lay, she realized. One of them piped up, “Didja really cut off y’rown arm out there?” The others chattered, exclaiming _shine!_ and _glory!_ and asking endless questions.

She was silent, refusing to look at the stump of her arm. The pain was nearly paralyzing now that the adrenaline was gone, but she merely grimaced.

“If you make it through, if ye can still fight, he says he’ll make you his Imperator,” said the Mechanic.

Through gritted teeth, she growled, “About fucking time.”

The Immortan would keep putting off promoting her rank, for so long that she was sure it was intentional, but she did receive glories. When the stump of her arm came unbandaged, she was called to his audience and presented with her prosthetic, a deadly wonder of gears and tiny engines. She practiced with it endlessly, trying to master riding and shooting with such a heavy motorized thing, and though she could never quite move a bike the same way, it was almost as good. Her shooting, starting clumsy with her weight unbalanced, soon evened out, and some graceless riding was an even enough tradeoff for keeping her marksmanship, she thought.

It was shortly after the Ace was rocked with a stroke in the night, leaving his right half stiff and weak and his riding clumsier than her own that they were presented with their highest honor: abandoning their loaned replacement bike for the wheel to Immortan Joe’s own war rig. Her Furies became the rig’s crew, now not only elite fighters but supply runners, the highest honor any half-life war boy could receive. As she learned it, modded it, made it her own, her rig became unstoppable force, armored and armed to the teeth, her crew moving in tune down to their heartbeats, trusted with the most important job in the Citadel. She and Ace managed, somehow, to become even more in sync; his weak side was her strong one, and hers was his. His recovery was slow, but recover he did--soon the only evidence was the right side of his mouth sagging a bit, and the slight limp he walked with. 

She was named an Imperator on her seventeen hundredth day; she became Joe’s best, aptly, three hundred days after. She stripped off her white paint and grew tan in the sun, let her hair go longer between shaves, and instructed her boys to call her _she_ after that.

“Like a breeder?” they’d asked. “Or a milker?”

“Like a car,” she’d replied. “Like this rig.” Immortal, she implied. Unstoppable. Made of steel instead of flesh.

She painted the ghost of her old hand on the war rig’s door, the airbrush gripped tightly between metal fingers determined to perform finesse.

Though she’d rejected the offer for Imperator’s quarters, and though she and her crew fought like extensions of each others' bodies, she was no longer truly one of them: when they scarred themselves again as a team, she did not join them. There was a new distance between them, respect over camaraderie. Family, she’d accepted, didn’t exist at the Citadel and never would.

But when she drove through the Wasteland, she rode historic. 

.

Later, as the wives begin to retire for the night and Furiosa takes her post in the hard chair by the door, Angharad helps her unstrap her arm once more. She sits at Furiosa’s feet and takes the scarred stump in her soft hands, rubbing where the prosthetic has chafed, massaging feeling back into what few nerves it has left. Her touch is tentative, as if she’s handling a wounded bird; her fingertips are gentle enough to hold hollow bones. Furiosa doesn’t dare speak, barely dares to watch her, and Angharad doesn’t meet her eyes.

One of Angharad’s fingers wanders, brushing light as air over one of the red calloused marks that the straps of Furiosa’s harness have dug into her bare chest. Furiosa’s breath catches in her throat. Neither of them know how long it’s been when Miss Giddy appears in the doorway, her hair catching the moonlight like a tattooed spectre. Their heads shoot up, color rising in their faces as Miss Giddy considers them. After what feels like far too long, she breaks the silence as gently as one can, her voice just above a whisper. 

“Splendid, you should come to bed. It’s late.”

Angharad nods. Slowly, she stands. In one smooth motion, she strips off her soft shirt of white gauze, standing unashamed as the moonlight washes over her unblemished skin. She folds the shirt, laying it in Furiosa’s lap, then pads over to the antechamber where the wives sleep. She pauses at the doorway, meeting Furiosa’s eyes for a long moment before disappearing into the bedchamber, and a thrill shoots up Furiosa’s spine, quick as lightning, making her face burn and stomach queasy.

(The shirt turns dull and brown with wasteland dust and engine grease, and Furiosa sweats through the delicate fabric, unused to covering herself, but the pain of her prosthetic’s harness is so much less with it on. She never removes it but to wash.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have a mad max blog which you can find [here](http://a-fuel-injected-suicide-machine.tumblr.com/)
> 
> if you want to scream about this universe with me / see some bonus fic content occasionally


	5. Chapter 5

the fifth history (fracture)

.

Furiosa sometimes smuggles little parts into the Wives’ chambers, showing them how things work; a spark plug here, a catalytic converter there, anything that she can carry in without looking suspicious.

Toast proves to be the best with them, her hands quick and nimble as she completes any task Furiosa gives her, hungry for mechanical knowledge that Furiosa wishes she could give more of. Capable, too, has an aptitude for trickier minutia; her hands are steady, good with delicate wiring, and sometimes Furiosa even asks for her help when her prosthetic needs maintenance.

After a while, they master all the revhead work she can smuggle in. They are frustrated, bored in their prison, all their books long-read and stories long-told. Miss Giddy only gives them lessons for a few hours a day, and her histories have long since been told besides. Toast paces like a trapped animal when things get like this. Capable weaves, glaring at the fibers as if she could set them aflame. Angharad used to write, but since she fell pregnant she has taken to sitting with the Dag, staring into space. Cheedo is still new, and for her there are still books left unread, so she reads, trying to go slowly, trying to savor them. Furiosa watches them with a pain she can’t quite articulate; eventually she realizes that it’s sympathy.

The idea comes like a burst of sunlight. She teaches them to load her guns.

At her guard post, she always has no less than three. Her rifle--semi-automatic, a loud powerhouse that she can aim as easy as breathing; a heavy black handgun in a holster at her hip, the same make as the Immortan’s and a gift from him when she received the war rig; and a bolt-action crossbow, just in case.

Toast falls upon the guns with a hunger for knowledge Furiosa would call ravening, loading and reloading them until muscle memory takes hold and she can do it without pausing. Cheedo hangs behind her, a nervous curiosity on her face. Capable and the Dag are eager as well, getting gun oil on their flowing skirts as they work. Furiosa can’t help but feel a strange sort of pride as she watches them, the warmth she almost feels when she watches her boys train.

Angharad hangs back. Cheedo hands her the rifle, showing her how to unload the clip so she can try loading it.

“It’s fine,” Furiosa hears Angharad say. “I can see how you did it.”

“You don’t want to try?”

“You can just show me. I don’t need to do it.”

Furiosa is about to interject when Toast looks up from the handgun.

“Furiosa,” she says, snapping the clip in place. “Will you teach me to shoot?”

All five of them fall silent, as if she’ll scold them.

Furiosa takes the gun, unloading it, considering the question. Finally, she says, “You can’t fire it in here, but I’ll teach you to aim.”

Toast’s face lights up, and Angharad slams the rifle she was reluctantly loading down on the table. They all jump at the noise, staring at her.

“No,” she says with vehemence bordering on rage.

Toast turns to face her. “What?”

Angharad ignores her, turning to glare at Furiosa, angry tears in her eyes. “We aren’t your Furies, Furiosa.” Her voice is steady. “Don’t act like you can make us into soldiers.”

The Dag scoffs. “Don’t be stupid, Splendid. How’ll we be soldiers if we can’t even shoot? Where would we get guns?” she takes the rifle, loading it confidently. “It’s just something to learn.”

“I don’t want to learn!” Angharad yells. “I don’t want to kill people! I don’t even want to know _how_!”

At the sight of Furiosa’s face, they all fall silent. Her face is hard as rock, her eyes stinging with what would be tears if she hadn’t forgotten how to cry long ago.

She spits the words when they come: _“Lucky you.”_

Angharad falters. The air is thick with tension.

“Do you think I _wanted_ to be an Imperator?” Furiosa hisses. “Do you think I want to fight for this place?” She yanks her rifle away, loading it without even needing to look, strapping it back onto herself. “I’m a prisoner here too,” she says.

“And you _keep_ yourself a prisoner!” Angharad yells. Cheedo jumps, staring at her with shock bordering on fear. “You’re their best soldier, everyone says it! Every time you fight, you keep Joe from falling! How many battles have been won because of you? How many victories are tied to your name? While all the while we’re stuck in here, forced to breed baby warlords!” She stands, motioning to her growing belly. “I’m pregnant with a murderer,” she says, her voice tight with fury. “Do you think _I’ll_ be allowed to be a mother? They’ll take him away from me, and teach him to fight and kill and ruin, just like _you_.”

“I do whatever I need to survive!” Furiosa yells back. Her good hand is shaking. Distantly, she’s aware of how her voice rings through the vault, booming low like a soldier’s, trained to be heard over engines and gunfire. “I had your life once, don’t forget that! Don’t tell me for a _second_ that you would die before becoming something like me!” Her voice lowers, growing cold, and she can see the wives shrink away from her. “You have no idea where I came from,” she spits, “or what I had to sacrifice.”

“You say you came from a green place,” Angharad hisses, “but you’ve never nurtured a single thing.” Capable takes her by the arm, her eyes pleading. Angharad shakes her off, her eyes still blazing. She snatches up a bullet from the table, brandishing it like an accusation. “All you can sow is anti-seed. Plant it, and watch the thing die. You’ve killed too much to make anything grow. How are we to know that you didn’t kill the world?” Capable takes her arm again, holding Angharad back before she can continue. She shakes her head, leading Angharad away, murmuring placations even as Angharad glares over her shoulder, meeting Furiosa’s eyes with furious betrayal.

Furiosa stands rigid guard for the rest of the night, refusing to speak, just as she did when she first received the post; the wives give her a wide berth, treading carefully as if they might set her off again--as if they’re scared of what might happen if they do. That night, Immortan Joe sends for Angharad again, her third night in a row. When Miss Giddy tells her, pity heavy in her voice, she curls in on herself in anguish, exhausted and overtaxed and desperate for a respite. On any other day, Furiosa would try to offer solace; today, her pride keeps her distant, her face emotionless as the other women shoot her dirty looks for standing silent while Angharad weeps bitter tears. In moments like these, they remember that first and foremost she is their jailer, just another guard set over them, and Furiosa isn’t sure if it makes her stomach turn with regret, or with a sick satisfaction that sometimes they fear her.

.

On the fifth day that Immortan Joe calls for Angharad, Furiosa swallows her pride.

Angharad’s head is in her hands when Furiosa sits next to her. She hears Cheedo gasp, tries to ignore the way Toast and Capable watch her with wary eyes.

“In the green place, I lived among many mothers,” says Furiosa quietly. “I tended seeds long before I ever held a gun.”

Next to her, Angharad is silent.

“I’m not innocent of brutality,” she says carefully. “But even the gentlest of the mothers had blood on her hands.” She wrings her own hands, metal passing over flesh. She so often forgets how cruel her prosthetic looks; it was not built for softness. She unstraps it, suddenly unable to stomach it being attached to her, lying it in her lap. “We learned to draw life from dead flesh. There are seeds that sow best in a corpse. But… we valued life. We really did.” She doesn’t mention the mercy that stemmed from scarcity--if they put a bullet in every threat, they would have been defenseless in a moon cycle.

Furiosa sighs. Next to her, Angharad has taken her head out of her hands. They don’t look at each other.

“When I was taken, I realized… if I wanted to survive long enough to make it back, I had to value _my_ life.” She cards a hand through her close-cropped hair, heaving another sigh. “And I’m surviving. I don’t know at what cost. The Vuvalini might not recognize me if they saw me; I’ve fought too long, killed too many people bloody. Sometimes more people than I needed to. Usually bloodier than I needed to.” She turns, and Angharad is watching her steadily. “I’m not proud of what I had to become,” Furiosa says.

The Dag is the only one watching them openly. The rest half-hide behind books, their pages turning conspicuously slowly.

“I know,” Angharad says softly, and if there’s bitterness in her tone it’s from resignation. “I know.” The second time she says it, it’s almost forgiveness.

They sit like that for a long time, a shared heaviness between them. Finally, Angharad speaks again. “This place is poison,” she says. “Pulling purity from the ground and corrupting it.” She motions to the clear pool in the center of the vault, the water pure and clean. “We might as well be bathing in blood.”

There is so much pain in her face that Furiosa commits her first act of gentleness in nearly seven thousand days. She takes Angharad’s smooth hand, her own skin rough and thick as leather, road dust and auto grease worked into its creases. Furiosa’s hands are not made for comforting. But Angharad squeezes it like a lifeline, and it’s like that that they sit, hands entwined.

The rest of the wives come over, one by one. Capable sits at Angharad’s side, wrapping an arm around her. The Dag sits at their feet, her head in Angharad’s lap, a hand curled around Furiosa’s knee. Toast sits by Furiosa, leaning her head on Furiosa’s shoulder. Cheedo curls against the Dag, leaning against Capable’s legs.

It’s a tenderness Furiosa forgot could exist. The pain of it is heart-rending; nobody has touched her like this outside of her most protected memories, ones that are turning foggy with age. They stay that way until the sun dips below the horizon, breathing into each others’ pain, until it’s time to haul open the vault door, until Angharad must gather her wits and set her composure and make the long walk to Joe’s quarters.

There are tears in her eyes when she helps Angharad stand, and Miss Giddy touches Furiosa’s face with a weathered crêpe-paper hand before turning to escort the Immortan’s favorite through the Citadel’s halls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell about mad max with me on my blog [here](http://a-fuel-injected-suicide-machine.tumblr.com)
> 
> final chapter goes up tomorrow! stick around if you love Queer Angst™


	6. Chapter 6

the bid for the future (redemption)

.

The vault is grey with pre-dawn light on the seven thousandth day. Miss Giddy had taken up her shotgun, bidding Furiosa to sleep at her post in preparation for the day to come. She doesn’t sleep easy; only a few hours of restless dozing on the hard bench carved into the wall, but it’s something.

She is half-awake when Angharad slips out of the sleeping chamber, the delicate latticework of scars on her face glowing in the silver light. Her face is solemn, but her eyes have a light in them that has been missing for far too many days.

Furiosa sits up, blinking blearily in the half-light. Angharad sits next to her.

“Are you ready?” Furiosa asks. Her voice is low and rough with sleep.

“I’ve been ready since the first day you opened that vault,” Angharad replies.

Furiosa laughs low. “Faith in me from the beginning, huh.”

“Something like that,” she smiles ruefully.

Furiosa’s laughter fades, her eyes growing distant. “A lot of people might die today,” she says solemnly. “ _We_ might die today.”

“I know,” Angharad says. “I’m ready.”

“You might have to kill,” Furiosa says, not sure if it’s remorse or a challenge in her voice. 

“I know,” Angharad repeats.

Furiosa isn’t so cruel as to ask if she thinks it will be worth it. Some things, she knows, you need to do to survive.

“Are _you_ ready?” Angharad asks, and Furiosa looks at her in surprise. “To leave your crew behind?”

Never, throughout her meticulous plans, has she afforded herself the luxury to contemplate that. She has carved out a life for herself in this prison, she knows, and could have some kind of family if she’d sought it. But her boys would always love death first and foremost, and Furiosa was born sowing seeds. She feels a pang only for the Ace, and hopes he can make it out alive. Hopes that he’ll survive hating her; it will make his losing her easier.

“I am,” she says, and she means it. “I always have been.”

Angharad nods, more solemn than satisfied. The sun is beginning to rise, warming the light that trickles through the skylights. At some point, Angharad takes her hand, holding it as they watch the morning come.

Furiosa realizes that Angharad is smiling, a soft and delicate thing on her scarred-up face. Furiosa’s own face is drawn and set, her mind rushing with worries and plans and counting and recounting variables, but Angharad is smiling, pure and clean, hope shining out of every pore.

Their eyes meet. Furiosa’s metal fingers twitch, tapping nervously.

“This baby won’t be a warlord,” Angharad says, and it’s like she’s telling a secret. “I want it to have mothers. As many mothers as you had.”

Furiosa finds herself smiling back, feels it twisting her face, like she’s forgotten how it’s done.

“I want you to be one of them, if you’d want.”

“I don’t know how good a mother I’d be,” Furiosa says. “After all I’ve done.”

“It’s made you all the better,” Angharad says. “You can teach it to survive.” The sunrise is painting her gold, and Furiosa wants to memorize her like this, just in case.

Day is breaking, and in the next room the other women will soon be stirring.

Angharad stands, and Furiosa rises as if by reflex, not quite ready to let go. They look at each other for a long moment, and then Furiosa reaches forward, curling her intact hand at the nape of Angharad’s neck. Her hair catches along Furiosa’s rough fingers, soft like silk. In another life, perhaps she would have run her hands through that soft hair. In this new life, if they survive, perhaps she will. Angharad reaches up, cupping Furiosa’s face in her smooth hand like it’s made of delicate glass. The distance between them closes, and Furiosa presses their foreheads together, their eyes closing for a long moment, their noses and lips nearly brushing, taking in each others’ breath. 

When they pull apart, they lock eyes, an understanding between them.

“I’ll go wake the others,” Angharad says softly.

Furiosa nods. “They’ll need me at the rig soon.”

If their lips meet before they part ways, there is no one around to see it. Privacy, in these halls, is a rare and fleeting thing; what happens in those stolen moments belongs only to their holders. 

Something in Furiosa’s chest feels tight and lighter than air; like nerves, but giddier. She suspects it may be hope. Walking out into the sunlight, stepping into the cab of the War Rig, fanging it away from the Citadel for the final time, even as her body is tight and tense with fear, her jaw set with determination, she realizes that it’s joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. The end to this monstrous, self-indulgent piece of work that I spent far too many hours on and wayyy too many tears. Thank you for reading. 
> 
> do you like Weeping? about Ladies? come weep with me at my [mad max blog](a-fuel-injected-suicide-machine.tumblr.com)


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